Brother, Can You Spare a Dream?: 1929-1941

NARRATOR: The 1920s witnessed the
triumph of an international image empire.
The capital of motion picture production
was Hollywood
ruled by an unlikely aristocracy
of mostly immigrant entrepreneurs
and larger-than-life big screen deities.
By 1927, silent movies had reached
an economic and expressive peak.
But an unexpected end was near.
[SINGING] Toot toot tootsie
Goodbye
Toot toot tootsie
Don't cry
EYMAN: Sound pictures didn't grow
out of silent pictures.
It's a different hybrid
that kind of choked off this plant
that had been flourishing
and then in comes this other thing and
simply strangles it and renders it extinct.
NARRATOR:
In market-driven Hollywood
movies without sound
were suddenly considered outdated.
During the years that followed
80 percent of silent films
were left to decay and disappear.
[CROWD CLAMORING]
Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
You ain't heard nothing yet.
NARRATOR: The Jazz Singer was a
landmark, but not as new as it sounded.
Movies with sound dated to the very first
films made by Thomas Edison
and his associate
W.K.L. Dickson in the 1890s.
Technical advances during the early 20s
allowed movie engineers
to find a way to link a recorded disk
with a projector.
Again, the power of technology
was transforming a business
that reflected its founders'
immigrant dreams and ambitions.
ORR:
The story of The Jazz Singer
in many ways, matches the story
of the Warner Bros
that you have Jewish brothers, who come
from a traditional Jewish background
and yet they want to be successful
in the non-religious American life
the non-Jewish life.
NARRATOR: At first, Warner's sound
and disk system was a success
but keeping two machines in synch
was a problem.
Already, another mogul
was eyeing alternatives.
KREUGER: William Fox was probably
the most acquisitive man
who ever existed in the motion picture
industry anywhere in the world.
At one point, either through
his corporation or individually
he owned one third of
all the movie theaters in the entire world.
If those upstarts, the Warners,
could have sound on disk, by gum
William Fox could do one better.
NARRATOR:
Fox was tough and determined.
Left with a withered arm
after a childhood accident
he became a formidable
one-armed golfer.
He prided himself
on never wearing a watch.
The day was over
when the work was done.
With the coming of sound,
Fox was developing an optical system
that put both picture and soundtrack
on the same film.
Meanwhile, at Warner Bros.,
Sam Warner was the media visionary.
EYMAN: If Sam Warner was alive today,
we'd call him an early adopter.
He was a tinkerer. He loved gadgets.
He loved the latest thing.
MAN:
Quiet, please!
[BLOWS WHISTLE]
NARRATOR: Sam Warner saw the shape
of an emerging new multimedia world
but the 42-year-old mogul
wouldn't live to see it come.
Only a day before the premiere of
The Jazz Singer, he unexpectedly died.
Another death added
further confusion and uncertainty
to a period known as
The Great Hollywood Panic.
And the shake-up was just beginning.
Using theaters as his powerbase,
Marcus Loew assembled MGM in 1924.
Then, in 1927, just a month before
the premiere of The Jazz Singer
Loew, 57, died from a heart attack.
William Fox saw his chance.
He launched an ambitious $50 million
takeover bid for Loews/MGM.
Everybody started to take note
of this lone person out there of
"Oh, my God, he could have control
of all of this stuff."
Almost replacing the idea
of what Edison had to begin with
and I think that scared them.
[CAR SKIDDING THEN CRASHING]
NARRATOR: Just as Fox
was about to complete his coup
like a sudden movie plot twist
a serious car crash in 1929
left him hospitalized.
[SIREN WAILING]
Three months later, another kind of crash
ended Fox's power play forever.
The stock market crash of 1929
wiped out many American fortunes
and the movie moguls
were not immune.
Much of their empires was built on paper,
bank loans and investment credit.
Weighing most heavily were the costs of
supporting mortgages
on the lavish new picture palaces
they had built during the 20s.
Added to this, was the cost of
converting to sound.
For now, the days of easy money
were over.
BERGMAN:
In 1929, average movie attendance
was something like 120 million a week.
I mean, a staggering, staggering number.
People think the Depression didn't affect it.
It did. It cut it in half.
They were dealing with substantial
lessening in revenues.
NARRATOR: Ambitious and unrelenting,
William Fox was the first to fall.
Creditors wrested control
of his company in 1930.
Even with an $18 million buyout
William Fox was an emperor
without an empire.
By the mid-1930s,
despite a string of horror movie hits
including Dracula and Frankenstein
Universal Studios
was also awash in debt.
Uncle Carl
rallied his motion picture family.
Fate has dealt us a vicious,
crushing blow.
We must recover from it or go down.
And the only way
we can stay in business
is to fight as we have never fought before
in our lives.
NARRATOR: Despite his fighting spirit,
Carl Laemmle was forced to sell Universal.
For his niece, a dancer,
it was more than a business loss.
She'd grown up on the Universal lot.
I know that I cried myself to sleep
a lot of nights
because I missed Universal so much.
I mean, it was my home.
It just broke my heart to have to leave.
NARRATOR: While the moguls
struggled to maintain cash flow
stars were the upfront faces
of Hollywood.
For audiences, they were the first to
confront the challenge of talking pictures.
STENN:
There literally were stars
whose future hung in the balance
of a sound test
where they had to recite
"Little Bo Peep".
And they would stand outside
while the sound engineer
who had become a godlike figure on the
set, was ranked higher than the director.
If the director said cut and the soundman
said no good for sound, you did it again.
NARRATOR:
In 1930, Louis B. Mayer
anxiously waited to learn
how MGM's most glamorous property
would survive the verdict
of the microphone.
Give me a whisky,
ginger ale on the side.
And don't be stingy, baby.
NARRATOR:
Playing a character that justified
Garbo's husky Swedish accent
sound only enhanced her
exotic image.
The studios began
a remarkable comeback
aided by the appeal of sound
and supported by major investments
from Wall Street.
BEAUCHAMP: With the transition to sound,
the cost of each film doubled or tripled.
All of a sudden this was a big deal,
and banks came into the equation.
It was no longer one or two men
running a company
it became the moneymen, plural,
who were having their say on everything.
If moneymen had power in Hollywood,
two brothers, immigrants from Italy
were able to wield as much clout as those
who had their names over studio gates.
Beginning in 1908,
A.P. And A. H Gianinni
were probably among the first bankers
willing to loan money
to some of those
in this brand-new movie business.
NARRATOR: The Giannini's Bank of Italy
in San Francisco
later nationwide Bank of America
backed the formation
of United Artists
and provided independent producers such
as Cecil B. DeMille and Sam Goldywn
with the money
to make their greatest movies.
As moviemaking became big business
the studios evolved into corporations
with boards and stockholders
intertwined with the world of
Wall Street and New York finance.
MALTIN:
It's always fascinated me
that while we use the word Hollywood to
be synonymous with the movie business
the movie business was always
headquartered in New York City
not Hollywood.
[GUNSHOTS]
[WOMAN SCREAMS]
Movies weren't the only source of
mass-media entertainment in the 1930s.
A major challenge to mogul power
was radio.
KREUGER: Imagine farmers
who'd come home weary
because they've been digging furrows
with their plows all day.
They turn on a radio and suddenly they're
hearing the biggest stars in the country
in their living room, free.
It was a miracle.
NARRATOR:
RKO had been forged in the 1920s
as an amalgam of radio,
theater and movie interests
but at first, the moguls tried
to ignore the radio revolution.
They refused to let their stars perform
on the airwaves.
Finally, in the end, they recognized
a challenge as an opportunity.
KRUEGER: Radio was not only a threat
to the studios
but also it enriched the studios
by providing so many performers
that the audiences already loved.
Imagine how wonderful it was
when Hollywood would sign those people
to do movies
because now they could see them.
Many of the people,
particularly at Paramount, were radio stars.
NARRATOR: The most successful
radio-to-movie star was Bing Crosby.
GIDDINS: This was the first guy ever to be
the number-one box-office star
five years consecutively.
No one else had ever done that.
Not Gable, not Stewart,
not Cagney, no one.
NARRATOR:
In the end, Hollywood didn't defeat
the challenge of radio, it absorbed it.
As the moguls added sound
to their entertainment arsenal
they consolidated their control
over all aspects of moviemaking.
Many of the great silent comedians
were among the first to be swallowed up
by big studio power
and industrial-style production methods.
They knew timetables,
they knew scripts
they knew how to outlay everything
in advance.
But Keaton, like Chaplin, like Lloyd,
really didn't work well with a script.
And he wanted to have the freedom
to experiment.
And if that didn't work
to the time schedule
then that had problems for MGM.
NARRATOR:
Of all of the great silent clowns
only Charlie Chaplin maintained
his independence and creativity
during the sound era.
GIDDINS: Chaplin was a millionaire
many times over.
He was one of the few artists
of the 20th century
who got complete ownership of
all his work.
He didn't have to answer to a studio.
NARRATOR: With a worldwide fan base,
than included Albert Einstein
Chaplin had the popularity and power
to release City Lights in 1931
an essentially silent film
in the midst of an industry
captivated by cacophony.
Soon, a new generation of comics
arrived in Hollywood.
The Marx Brothers,
masters of anarchic dialogue
were four veterans of the Broadway stage.
Unlike silent stars, they weren't improvisers.
Answer the second question first.
NARRATOR: But their verbal irreverence
was right for talkies.
Can't you see what I'm trying to tell you?
I love you.
Oh, Your Excellency.
You're not so bad yourself.
By the time the Marx Brothers
were on film
they were doing routines
that they had perfected on stage
for years on the vaudeville circuit,
so they knew what they were doing.
They just took everything apart.
They double-crossed me.
BERGMAN: In a time when you don't have
great faith in the institutions
of your country,
they were everybody's heroes.
Tell them the enemy comes from afar
with a hey na nonnie, nonnie
and a hot cha cha.
NARRATOR: The winners and losers
of the sound era
were not only determined by
careful preparation
pleasing voices and abilities to thrive
in the studio system.
Success or failure in Hollywood
could be the arbitrary product
of changing times.
STENN: Everything Clara Bow
embodied in the 1920s
the youthful excess, the joy
the extravagance of just living life
on the edge
when the stock market crashed
and the banks failed
that almost seemed obscene
to the public.
It wasn't fun anymore.
You miserable common,
vulgar hussy.
STENN: She didn't understand
what she had done wrong.
It was the role she played on-screen.
NARRATOR: In real life, Bow alienated
Hollywood moguls and movie stars
by refusing to deny her impoverished
and uncultured background
a past that many in Hollywood shared,
but were eager to forget.
With the coming of sound,
the hyperkinetic actress
was forced to stay
within range of early microphones.
She became uncertain
and self-conscious.
Then worse,
there were embarrassing accusations
from a former friend
and disgruntled personal assistant.
She was portrayed as an alcoholic,
drug addict
and accused of everything
from promiscuity to incest and bestiality.
Based on a mix of fact,
rumor and outright lies
the accusations were devastating.
Under the pressures of stardom
Bow had already suffered from
overwork and nervous exhaustion.
In 1931, bewildered and defeated,
she left Paramount.
Two years later, only 28,
she retired forever.
While silent stars were fading
in the early 1930s
Hollywood was infused with a
new generation of behind-the-camera talent.
Talkies needed talk, and for semiliterate
moguls like Jack Warner
like it or not, that meant writers.
Jack Warner's famous line
about describing screenwriters
was that they were
schmucks with Underwoods
Underwoods being
an old typewriter of the period.
NARRATOR: As far as writers were
concerned, the contempt was mutual.
Herman J. Mankiewicz
was a New York journalist wit
who began writing snappy titles
during the silent era.
Mankiewicz had a Chicago
newspaperman friend, Ben Hecht.
NORMAN: Ben Hecht is a great example
of the artist as scoundrel
the artist as
art is what you can get away with.
Hecht was eminently prepared
to be a Hollywood screenwriter
because he was witty and clever
and fast.
NARRATOR: The words "power"
and "writer" rarely appeared
on the same page in Hollywood
but during the 30s,
Hecht and Mankiewicz thrived.
Hard drinkers, hustlers and gamblers
they turned out a series of hits,
talking back to hard times.
Hollywood needed new writers
and directors for the era of sound
but most of all what was needed
was stars who could handle dialogue.
Oh, I love you so much, dearest.
Hold me tight for just a moment.
NARRATOR: As they gathered new talent,
the Hollywood image factories
often reflected the tastes
of the studio heads who controlled them.
None more than Warner Bros.
ORR:
My grandfather was not a literate guy.
He used to say when reading a script
if you can't read it on the toilet
it's too long.
Warner Bros. Starts to attract
a new kind of actor
an actor from the theater
but an actor who is not necessarily
handsome or beautiful
in any traditional way.
They are people, some have said,
who mirror my grandfather.
They mirror Jack Warner's
combativeness
tough, little, not necessarily pretty.
NARRATOR: A former vaudeville
song and dance man
who briefly worked as a
female impersonator to make ends meet
arrived in Hollywood in 1930.
His name was James Cagney.
Just got burned up, that's all.
NARRATOR:
Cagney made a forceful impression
in the bullet-ridden 1931 crime saga
The Public Enemy
and came to personify
an image of the often-violent ambiguities
of the American Dream
during the desperate
and sometimes lawless years
of the Great Depression.
He also was someone Jack Warner
couldn't push around.
Jimmy Cagney was a big star
but Cagney was also one of
the biggest problems for Warner Bros.
He was very demanding.
He spoke Yiddish so he could understand
what the Warner Bros. Were saying
in private meetings sometimes
and jump in
with comments of his own.
[SPEAKING IN YIDDISH]
NARRATOR: Romanian immigrant
Emmanuel Goldenberg
once had ambitions to be a rabbi
but he found his true calling
as a formally-trained New York actor.
A cultured man
who spoke eight languages
he changed his name
to Edward G. Robinson
and transformed himself
into one of Hollywood's toughest hoods
another bad guy hero who appealed
to Depression-era sensibilities.
Fine shot you are!
You obviously couldn't have a credible
success story about a guy
starting a Laundromat
and getting rich in 1931.
In 1931, I believe the unemployment rate
was something like 16 percent
and by 1932 it was 24 percent.
If you wanna tell a success story
and people still liked people who rose
to the top and were hard-working
well, the way to do it
is to be Little Caesar.
And he lived clean, and didn't mess around
with girls, and didn't drink.
He just did it by blowing
people's heads off.
MAN:
Shoot, Rico.
Get it over with.
NARRATOR:
After some off-Broadway experience
an ingénue
who called herself Bette Davis
found a place at Universal
around the same time as Robinson.
When she moved to Warner Bros
her rise to stardom
was often frustrated
as Jack Warner tried to figure out
what to do with his willful new acquisition.
Bette Davis was not so much an actress
as she was a force of nature
and woe to those who got in her path
when she was on a mission.
I thought you'd at least be amusing.
You turned out to be dull,
stupid and so afraid.
HASKELL: She went up
toe to toe with Jack Warner
and this was a totally unusual thing
to do, particularly for a woman.
There were a few male actors
who went out on their own.
I mean, she made strides for everyone.
So, what Bette Davis did was just
astonishing by any standard.
NARRATOR: In the endless battle between
moguls and movie stars
Bette Davis was on the front lines.
She led the fight to give studio stars
some control over their careers.
[HUMMING]
In 1933, an independent and strong-willed
actress named Katharine Hepburn
played hard to get with RKO.
I say, "Look at me, world.
I'm Jo March and I'm so happy."
NARRATOR:
Little Women confirmed her as a star.
Hollywood was looking for
an American Garbo
and they found much more.
Like Garbo and Bette Davis
Katharine Hepburn insisted
on being no one but herself.
And she knew her worth.
BERG: Even before she was here,
when her contract was negotiated
they offered her
a certain amount of money.
She wanted much more.
Three times that.
They said,
"You've never made a movie."
And she said, "I don't care.
If you don't want me then don't pay me.
But that's what my price is.
I'm $1,500 dollars a week and that's that.
That's the price."
All right, places, everybody.
NARRATOR: Even if they were difficult,
stars that talked were good
singing ones even better.
In 1930, Hollywood produced
70 musicals.
But sound alone wasn't enough.
The visual dazzle of the silent era
needed to be learned again.
Dance director Busby Berkeley
was made for the movies.
In his musicals, the camera was
choreographed along with his chorines.
Despite Broadway success
Berkeley was not trained
as a traditional choreographer.
His experience coordinating formations
in the military
was an important influence on the
patterns and precision of his numbers.
KREUGER: What he did was come up
with the ideas for dance routines
creating marvelous rhythms
by having
one line of chorus people dancing
in one kind of meter
and having another group
dancing in another kind of meter.
So the assembly of these Berkeley visions
existed only in his mind.
Only he knew what he wanted and how
the final musical number would come out.
NARRATOR: Most of all,
Busby Berkeley was a filmmaker.
He created a kind of movie musical
that overwhelmed the stage-bound
standards of Broadway.
He also brought intimacy to his numbers
with close-ups
that inspired thousands of American girls
who dreamed of stardom on the big screen.
[CHORUS SINGING]
Yet even with all his innovations
Berkeley's elaborate numbers
were still based
on the kind of spectacles
that were theater traditions.
KREUGER:
Berkeley's career burned out
because the vision of what
a musical number is in film changed
and it changed largely
because of Fred Astaire.
Fred Astaire didn't need
choruses behind him.
NARRATOR:
The career of Fred Astaire is an example
of how the creative power of a star
can change how movies are made.
He persuaded
his director and his studio
that he should be always shot
head to toe.
He said " I don't dance with just my feet,
I dance with my whole body".
And he did.
And it changed the presentation
of those musical numbers.
And he found a perfect on-screen partner
in Ginger Rogers.
Through a series of films in the 1930s
Astaire and Rogers
lifted the musical to new heights.
NARRATOR:
In 1932, at age 3
Shirley Temple may not have had
the elegant moves of Fred Astaire
but soon she would more than match
his star power.
For floundering Fox Studios,
Temple was a godsend.
In 1934, the studio signed her
to a $150-per-week contract.
That year she sang and danced her way
through 12 movies
and received a special Academy Award
in 1935.
Temple's movies cost
2 to $300,000 to make.
By 1938, they were grossing a million
and a half each in their first run alone.
Even dancing beside the legendary
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson
Temple commanded the spotlight,
the embodiment of box-office power.
Shirley Temple didn't own
or run 20th Century Fox.
She made it possible.
While Shirley Temple's star
was rising at Fox in the early 30s
Adolf Zukor's Paramount
was still struggling.
How're the girls today?
NARRATOR: A quite different actress
sashayed to the rescue.
Oh, why Lou, I'm so very, very,
happy to see you.
Mae West came out of vaudeville.
She had this show called Sex.
She actually went to jail.
She was considered raunchy,
even in the theater.
Oh, pleased to meet you.
She wasn't exactly sexy,
and yet she reeked sex at the same time.
I am delighted.
I have heard so much about you.
Yeah, but you can't prove it.
There was ambivalence
on the part of the moguls.
They saw that sex sells,
salaciousness sells, raunchy the better.
On the other hand, they had become
this force, this moral force.
They took it upon themselves
to uplift the public.
I'm a little late getting dressed.
NARRATOR:
As a talking picture star
Mae West challenged Hollywood censors
with something new.
Come up again. Anytime.
NARRATOR:
Words.
She was known for her sly
double entendres
and overblown sex appeal.
But Mae West was no dumb blonde.
She was a hardheaded businesswoman,
as well as a scriptwriter.
She could do it all.
She could produce a movie if she had to.
She could direct a movie if she had to.
Yeah, they'll listen to you.
So I think she had the respect of,
not only my grandfather
but everybody else in the business.
NARRATOR: In 1935, Mae West was the
highest-paid woman in the United States.
But a new code of movie censorship
managed by conservative
Catholic Joseph Breen
began to, sentence-by-sentence
water down Mae West's slinky way
with words.
It got so tight after a while that
nobody could do anything on-screen.
Married couples
had to be in separate beds.
You could never show
a bathroom or a toilet.
Kisses could only be so many seconds,
and all that sort of stuff.
That went on for years.
NARRATOR: An increase in censorship led
to a decrease in Mae West's popularity.
Power and fame in Hollywood
could be spectacular
but as fleeting as
a production code kiss.
In the 1920s, Lewis J. Selznick
a fearless, acerbic
and opportunist former jeweler
found this out when he entered
the movie business
and took on Louis B. Mayer
and Adolph Zukor.
Everything about Lewis J. Selznick
was abhorrent to Louis B. Mayer.
He was extravagant.
He was boastful.
He just overextended too far, too fast
too many properties, too many stars,
not enough money.
NARRATOR: "Live beyond your means,"
he told his sons, David and Myron.
"It gives you confidence."
Whether Lewis Selznick
did himself in
or got help
from his annoyed and angry competitors
in 1923 he was forced into bankruptcy.
But Hollywood power
is often generational.
His sons, who already had a taste
of the movie business as teenagers
were determined to get even.
SELZNICK: I think from the photos that you
can see of my father, he was a dreamer.
So there was this robust charm
aggression, drive,
combined with a dreamer.
NARRATOR: Early on, the Selznick brothers
set out to conquer the world of the movies
that had humiliated their father.
To enhance his image,
David added a middle initial to his name.
I think he went through the letters of the
alphabet and decided, "The O looks good."
In later years, people thought he might be
David O, apostrophe, Selznick
the first Irish Jew,
but that wasn't the case.
NARRATOR: Hard-working,
with an innate sense of story
David O. Selznick became
a Hollywood player at RKO and MGM
despite being surrounded by moguls
with no love lost for his father
especially Louis B. Mayer.
This didn't stop Selznick from marrying
Mayer's daughter Irene in 1930.
Despite jokes
about "the son-in-law also rises" at MGM
he started his own studio in 1935,
announcing boldly
"I'm 32 and I can afford to fail."
That was the kind of self-confidence
that built Hollywood
but the moguls also exercised power
far beyond their studio walls.
When Herbert Hoover
was inaugurated as President in 1929
Louis B. Mayer was invited
as the new president's
first overnight guest at the White House.
The Hollywood studio heads
were staunchly conservative
and mostly Republicans.
But in the turmoil of the 1930s,
America was rife with radical thinking.
When avowed socialist Upton Sinclair
looked like he might win the race
for California Governor in 1934
the Hollywood image factories
were geared up for action.
BEAUCHAMP:
MGM, with Thalberg in the front
created these faux news reels
of quote-unquote "bums
coming into California"
saying, "Yeah,
we're coming to California.
Upton Sinclair's gonna be governor.
We're gonna get a free ride."
And then played those things
as if they were newsreels.
NARRATOR: Ironically, the immigrant
moguls, like Louis. B. Mayer
had arrived in America as less than
promising newcomers themselves
but movie success allowed them
to ignore their past.
Socialist Sinclair was defeated.
Defeating Upton Sinclair
was the kind surreptitious power play
well known in Hollywood.
And not even Irving Thalberg was safe.
A perfectionist whose eye
was more on what was on the screen
than on the bottom line
it was said that the frail young producer
didn't make movies
he remade them.
Thalberg never took on-screen credit
but by the 1930s,
his success and power
and demands for a greater share
of MGM profits
rankled Louis B. Mayer
even though at $1 million a year
Mayer was America's
highest-paid executive.
To L.B. Mayer, the most important thing
in his life was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
He'd built it. It had his name on it.
It was his.
That was the most important thing
in his life.
To Irving Thalberg, the most
important thing in life was Irving Thalberg.
NARRATOR: Thalberg's fragile health
had always been a concern
but it never affected
his power at MGM
until 1932,
when he had a massive heart attack.
While Thalberg
was recuperating in Europe
Louis B. Mayer and his boss in New York,
Loew's president Nick Schenck
ordered a major reorganization.
They created a new inner circle
of unit producers
all equals to Thalberg.
VIEIRA:
It was a coup, no question about it.
Thalberg felt this was a betrayal.
It had been done while he was away.
They used his illness to take advantage
of him, to depose him, essentially.
And he said,
"They knifed me. They knifed me."
NARRATOR: With no choice,
Thalberg returned to MGM
as just one of several producers
but his work still stood out
for high standards
and an often lavish commitment
to quality.
When Thalberg finally died at age 37
the sentimental side of Hollywood
celebrated his short but brilliant life.
Irving Thalberg would remain a model
of the elusive mix of art and business
that was the ideal, if not the reality,
of Hollywood success.
Even before the death
of Irving Thalberg
young, ambitious
and independent David Selznick
was angling to lead a new generation
of Hollywood moguls.
At the same time, his brother Myron
was carving a power base of his own
as an agent.
Myron was 5'8".
David was six feet tall.
My father had all of his hair
all of his life.
Myron started losing his hair in his 30s.
So he was this balding, acerbic
alcoholic, driven, charming rascal.
He was ruthless,
and I think a lot of people hated him.
Certainly Louis B. Mayer hated him.
NARRATOR:
Once tolerated as pests
during the 30s, agents were becoming
the bane of movie moguls
determined to control
the fates of their stars.
Myron Selznick
was the first to challenge their power.
He wouldn't be the last.
Opportunities to make it big
in the movies
were still there for those willing
to take on Hollywood power head on.
Howard Hughes was the young heir
of an inventive oilman from Texas.
He arrived in the movie capital in the 1920s,
a brash and handsome 20-year old.
He was already enthralled
by the magic of motion pictures.
MALTIN: It wasn't easy for an outsider
to break into the Hollywood inner circle.
Most people who tried to break
into the movie business were scrappers
and they had ambition,
they had drive
but they didn't have money,
they needed financing.
He didn't. He had the money.
WANAMAKER: He went to Carl Laemmle,
and Carl Laemmle, who was 2 feet tall
and Hughes was 7 feet tall,
it was quite a combination.
But they respected each other.
This young man
was coming and asking all the questions.
How do you make this?
How do you do that?
What do you do?
I mean, who do you hire?
And Laemmle knew that he was going
to be a force in Hollywood.
NARRATOR:
Hughes went his own way
but not without some of Hollywood's
most famous beauties at his side.
It took him four years,
and nearly $4 million
the most spent on a movie
up to that time
but in 1930
Hughes revealed his grandest ambitions
with an aerial epic
that celebrated his other great passion,
aviation.
Hell's Angels took off
where the movie Wings had flown before.
In Hollywood,
nothing succeeds like repetition.
Instead of Wings star Clara Bow
Hughes featured playfully sexy
Jean Harlow.
Would you be shocked
if I put on something more comfortable?
I'll try to survive.
NARRATOR: There had always been
Hollywood power in sex appeal.
Christened The Platinum Blond,
Harlow's career rose to the top at MGM.
Unlike jazz baby Clara Bow
she never dreamed of stardom
or pursued the fast life.
On-screen, she was someone else.
In the way that movies
are like shadows on a screen
they're images, they're illusions.
Really, all she wanted to be
was a housewife.
She liked to hemstitch.
She loved children.
She liked to cook.
She liked to write poetry.
What the?
NARRATOR:
Harlow was a presence on-screen
but MGM image makers made her a star
and then mated her to an actor
with male sex appeal
that was perfect for troubled
but irreverent Depression times.
Get out of there.
- Say, what's the idea?
- What?
Getting in that barrel.
Oh, I don't know.
Maybe I'm going over Niagara Falls.
Whoo! Ha-ha!
THOMSON:
Gable is country boy.
Cadiz, Ohio.
And yet, of course, what Gable had
false teeth and all
Come here.
THOMSON:
- Big ears
he had self-confidence.
You talk too much,
but you're a cute little trick at that.
THOMSON:
It was the redneck American
who'd been put in a good barber shop
and given half an hour and was spiffed up.
And there was nothing pretentious
about Gable.
"Well, I know I'm up here.
I know you're all looking at me,
and I know I'm being paid millions
and I know that women are lined up,
but you know, I'm just like you."
Women adored him,
but guys adored him too.
NARRATOR: The movie moguls didn't
need to be loved, they wanted to win.
Hollywood power was a gambler's game.
Darryl Zanuck
was one production head
who was unafraid to risk
adding an edge to movie storytelling.
He was convinced that controversy
could be just as saleable
as escapist entertainment.
ZANUCK: He was the youngest
of all of the moguls.
He believed you have to entertain
but you can also have some substance
and say some important things.
MAN:
Escape! Escape! My truck! Escape!
NARRATOR:
Zanuck and director Mervyn LeRoy
brought out the big guns with
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
a devastating indictment
of the Southern penal system.
Take a look at that.
The skunk.
NARRATOR:
It starred Paul Muni
a veteran of the Yiddish Art Theater
and Broadway.
MAN:
You're next.
NARRATOR: Showing the influence
of movies beyond entertainment
it led to prison reforms.
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
is to me the very nadir
of hopes and aspirations
as you've ever seen on a screen.
And they just said, you know,
screw it, let's make this movie.
Helen.
BERGMAN: It was the joy of being able
to make 50 movies a year.
You know, there was room for this.
- It was all gonna be so different.
- It is different.
They've made it different.
NARRATOR: Big studios like Warner Bros.,
where Zanuck worked
could afford
to take an occasional box-office risk.
Not fiercely independent
Samuel Goldwyn.
GOLDWYN JR:
I never saw him as a mogul.
He did not run a large plant
with hundreds of people
bowing and yessing him
lots of little busy assistants
and vice presidents
and all of that stuff.
He was just one guy.
He says, "The day
I put money under the door
and wait for something to happen,"
he says, "I'm out of this business."
BERG: Every time Sam Goldwyn
wanted to make a movie
he went to the Bank of America
and took out a loan
and he would put his house up
as collateral.
So there was always a period
of sweating it out for him
until the returns actually came in.
I remember when my father
would come home at night
and he'd say And I was just a kid.
I must have been about 7.
And he'd say,
"Well, we paid off the bank today."
And I would
get a little glass of beer to drink.
NARRATOR:
Sam Goldwyn was an independent
who had to make it on his own
but during the early 30s
in the shadows
of the big Hollywood studio gates
there was a neighborhood
filled with much more
marginalized independents.
It was called Poverty Row,
home to Columbia Pictures
controlled by another
street-savvy tough guy, Harry Cohn
the son of an immigrant tailor.
Cohn learned to pitch as a song plugger.
In 1920,
Harry joined his older brother Jack
and Universal executive Joe Brandt
in a company called CBC
named after the partners' initials.
Hollywood insiders laughed
because the letters also stood for
corned beef and cabbage.
In 1924,
CBC became Columbia Pictures
a more high-class sounding name
but the Cohn brothers' company
was still headquartered in Poverty Row
and their product far from prestigious.
When people went to the movies
and looked at the screen
if they saw the Paramount mountain
or the MGM lion
they would start applauding.
If they saw Columbia's lady with the torch,
they would start booing
which tells you something
about the movies of the era.
MALTIN: Harry Cohn and his brother Jack
were entrepreneurs.
They wouldn't have
called themselves that
they wouldn't have known what
the word meant, but they were.
Cohn was a rough,
foul-mouthed character
who gained admiration from people
who knew how to deal with him
and how to dish it out in return.
But he could be abusive.
He could be really abusive.
JAFFE: The stories were rampant that
he had phones on the studio lot tapped
that he could
listen into almost any conversation.
And his brother Jack
who lived on the East Coast,
and with whom he founded the company
they hated each other.
He was at a board meeting where they had
to physically be pulled apart
because they had a fistfight.
NARRATOR: Harry Cohn may have
tyrannized his brother Jack
but he found a creative collaborator
in a former Mack Sennett gagman
Frank Capra.
And a man like Capra
needs a man like Cohn
as much as a man like Cohn
needs a man like Capra.
And that was the beauty
of their relationship.
And I think they hated each other,
but also loved each other.
Always in Hollywood history
we see the conflict
between art and commerce
represented by the talent, the star,
or the director, and the businessman
the mogul or the head of the studio.
This is the story of Hollywood.
And out of that conflict
has always come something great.
Frank Capra was a classic example
of the American-immigrant story
of his era.
He came as a 6-year-old boy
from Sicily, in steerage
to the United States of America
where he rose to the very top
of the heap.
He found the streets of gold.
NARRATOR:
In the roller coaster world of Hollywood
all it took was one film
to lift Columbia
from the depths of Poverty Row
to the Academy Awards
the ultimate symbol of movie success.
At the 1935 Academy Awards ceremony
It Happened One Night
swept the year with the five top Oscars.
Overnight, Harry Cohn was playing
with the big guys
more respectable,
and maybe even more hated
but certainly a studio head
who proved
he could turn out good pictures.
With his success
Frank Capra went on to make
a series of comedy dramas
where the little guy still had a chance.
I think it was
John Cassavetes said
"Maybe there never
really was an America in the 1930s
maybe it was all Frank Capra."
Because Capra really defines that decade
so much in his movies.
NARRATOR:
Frank Capra's artful populism
added a sentimental glow
to tough Depression times
and made a hero
of the common man.
But far from the power centers
of Hollywood
there was one moviemaker
who knew American injustice
and opportunity, firsthand.
Born in 1884, Oscar Micheaux,
was the son of a freed slave.
BOGLE: He was a man who really didn't see
boundaries for himself
as an African American.
He didn't see the restrictions the dominant
culture was putting on African Americans.
I mean, he believed
you could really break through them.
NARRATOR:
By the 1930s
Micheaux had been in the movie business
for more than a decade.
Beginning as a farmer,
he started writing novels in 1913.
Then, partly as a response to
The Birth of a Nation
he turned to moviemaking.
His 1920 film Within Our Gates
deals with the hypocrisies of racial
purity and the horrors of lynching.
Micheaux would go on
to direct 42 movies
as a market for race films
grew among African American audiences
who were either stereotyped
or ignored by Hollywood.
BOGLE: I mean, this is so audacious.
Who does this man think he is?
He was so charismatic.
He looked as if it was God
coming to deliver a sermon.
He just had all of this presence
and this great fire within him
to do something.
So he's really advising
the Black community to lift itself up.
Race movie companies
just flourished around the country.
They might be in New Jersey
using Fort Lee.
They might be in part of Florida.
They might be in Chicago.
When sound does come in, it's expensive.
They don't always understand it.
Micheaux keeps going.
NARRATOR: Until the end of his career
in the late 1940s
Oscar Micheaux survived
with a mix of entertainment
sensationalism
and social currency.
Like the Jewish founders of Hollywood
he was reimagining America on-screen.
With the power of motion pictures
Micheaux
and other pioneering black filmmakers
were creating an on-screen world
that was separate and not equal
yet it was theirs.
The films of Oscar Micheaux
exposed the injustice
and unfinished business
of the American Dream.
Some of the most entertaining and
deeply-comforting movies of the 1930s
came from an unlikely mogul
and a star
who happily worked for nothing.
The mogul
was a lanky former commercial artist
from Kansas City
and his star was an ink-and-paint hero
named Mickey.
MALTIN:
Walt Disney was a Midwesterner.
Poor. Grew up with a father
who was kind of a ne'er-do-well.
But Walt had a drive.
Where this drive came from
whether it was poverty that instilled
that need to succeed in him, I can't say.
But he was always
working harder than he had to
to make a better product
than he had to
even if it meant making less money
than he could've.
BOTH [SINGING]:
Who's afraid of the big, bad wolf
NARRATOR: In the 1930s, Disney,
ever the innovator, was among the first
to embrace the expressive power
of the Technicolor film process
and his animation was the first
to be honored with an Oscar.
At the same time, the song
"Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?"
from his 1933 cartoon short
Three Little Pigs
became a sassy answer
to Depression gloom
proving again the power of the movies
to inspire as well as amuse.
Walt was never happy repeating himself.
That seems clear.
Having figured out sound and music,
having figured out color
he knew that the next advance
had to be a longer cartoon.
And he thought about
a feature-length cartoon.
Nobody in the film industry wanted it.
They said he was a fool.
They said he was recklessly ambitious
to wanna produce a feature-length film.
Because after all,
who would wanna see one?
Who would sit through it?
It was actually said
that watching a color cartoon
that long would hurt your eyes.
[STARTING TO SNEEZE]
[DWARFS LAUGHING]
In 1937, it took the support
of Hollywood's longtime banker
A.H. Gianinni
to get the money to complete
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
But the persistence and power
of Disney's imagination
produced one of the biggest-grossing
movies of all time.
When no one took cartoons seriously,
Walt Disney did.
He licensed his work to distributors,
but always kept the rights.
And as with Chaplin
he was among the first to recognize
the power of merchandising.
Walt Disney occupied his own space, both
literally and figuratively, in Hollywood.
I think of him as a visionary,
truly a visionary.
And I think of him more in league
with Thomas Edison
than I do with Louis B. Mayer
or Adolph Zukor.
NARRATOR:
Despite Disney's artful animation
the expressive power of color technology
was still new and expensive in 1939.
But when the film The Wizard of Oz
changed from black and white
to Technicolor
the Depression seemed to fade away.
Audiences entered a world
of Hollywood imagination
and a luminous new star
led the way.
Raised in vaudeville, Frances Gumm
found her way into the movies
and the overwhelming embrace
of MGM.
Here, she became Judy Garland.
Although it wasn't a major hit at first
the magic of The Wizard of Oz
would become more powerful with time.
In 1939, the world
was on the edge of catastrophe
far more devastating
than a Kansas tornado.
Hollywood stars like Judy Garland
would not only entertain
they would offer hope
and a sense of security.
[SINGING]
If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow
MAIETTA:
Judy Garland touched audiences
with her vulnerability,
with her humanity
unlike any other star in Hollywood.
She reached out to people
and wrapped them up in her arms.
NARRATOR: The Hollywood moguls
were always on the lookout
for promising stars and great stories.
Like The Birth of a Nation
24 years before
Gone With the Wind
was based on a novel
one of the most successful
in American history.
And again,
it showed the power of Hollywood
to reimagine America's past.
Times had changed by the 1930s.
David O. Selznick was eager to surpass
the record profits of The Birth of a Nation
but avoid the controversy
that D.W. Griffith had created.
BOGLE: One of the things
which Selznick set out to do
was get to the black press
and let them see
that we're making this movie
and that we wanna give important roles
to African-American actors and actresses.
There's also a section
in Gone With the Wind, in the novel
where the Ku Klux Klan
comes into the story
and they get rid of it.
NARRATOR: All the movie moguls
were tough and driven men.
David O. Selznick was, perhaps,
the most obsessive of them all.
SELZNICK: Long before I was born,
my father already was compulsive.
He already said to people,
"There aren't enough hours in the day.
That's the problem with the day.
I need 21 or 22 hours.
Why do I have to go to sleep at night?"
So when Benzedrine and Dexedrine
were prescribed to him
during Gone With the Wind, he said,
"This is wonderful.
Now I can have 22 hours a day."
NARRATOR: Grossing more than $20 million
in its first run
and winner of a record ten Oscars
Gone With the Wind was the most
successful movie ever produced.
This is one of the happiest moments
of my life.
NARRATOR: When Hattie McDaniel
was honored with an Oscar
it also suggested
that Hollywood imagery
had the power to change attitudes
about race in American movies.
But there was a long way to go.
BOGLE: When they had the big opening
in Atlanta and all the stars coming
Vivien Leigh back in the United States,
Olivia de Havilland.
Of course,
Clark Gable with Carole Lombard.
Hattie McDaniel
was not there at that opening.
They did not want her there
because of the South
and the South's attitudes.
I don't know nothing
about birthing babies.
BOGLE: And there was criticism
of Gone With the Wind
within
the African-American community.
At the same time, it was enjoyed.
NARRATOR: Even though Gone With
the Wind was set during the Civil War
for audiences in 1939
the disruption and struggles
of Scarlett O'Hara
mirrored the dislocations
in Depression America.
As God is my witness,
I'll never be hungry again.
NARRATOR: Gone With the Wind
represented the Hollywood dream factories
at a peak of profitability and power.
For the moguls,
it had been a remarkable success story.
Yet as powerful as they had become
many of the immigrant studio heads
remained insecure.
[SPEAKING IN GERMAN]
NARRATOR:
When Hitler and Nazism
began their anti-Semitic rise
in Europe during the 1930s
with the exception
of the Warner Bros
the Jewish moguls
hesitated to speak out.
They feared losing
vital German markets
and calling attention
to their Jewish roots
which could arouse anti-Semitism
in an America
overwhelmingly against going to war.
I think one of the most important things
for these Jews who came to this country
not just the moguls,
but for an entire generation or two
of Jewish immigrants
was to assimilate.
And part of that was not necessarily
to deny being Jewish
but it was just
not to broadcast it either.
That was certainly the case here
in Hollywood
where they were producing
this all-American art.
NARRATOR: While other Jewish moguls
were hesitant
retired Universal Studios founder
Uncle Carl Laemmle
hadn't forgotten his emigrant past.
LAEMMLE: He would visit Laupheim,
go back to Germany every year.
He'd never miss.
Of course, when Hitler came in power
then he was no longer allowed
to enter Germany.
And he wanted to do anything
that he could
to relieve the situation
for the Jews there.
He brought between
four and five hundred families over.
Some went to other countries,
but a lot of them came to the United States.
NARRATOR: When Carl Laemmle
died in 1939, at age 72
the Hollywood he had helped create
had triumphed during a turbulent decade.
More than ever,
audiences were captivated
by movie dreams.
But as the United States
approached the unknowns of the 1940s
the coming attractions
would become nightmares
and they were real.
[CROWD CHANTING]
[English - US - SDH]